Elsa Andersson

Who was Elsa Andersson?

Elsa Andersson was Sweden's first female aviator and stunt parachutist.

She was the daughter of a farmer in Strövelstorp in the Scanian countryside. Her mother died when she was aged six. Her elder brother left the family and sought a new life in America.

Always showing determination and ambition, she wanted to become more than just a farmer's wife and so, aged 21, in 1920, she learned to fly, becoming Sweden's first woman pilot. Her diploma was "no. 203". Not content with that, she went to Germany to learn parachute jumping.

In 1922, Andersson was killed on her third jump in Askersund, Sweden. Thousands of spectators were gathering below on the ice of the frozen lake Alsen. She had trouble releasing her parachute, which finally unfolded only at a small distance from the treetops and she crashed violently into the ground.

In 1926, the Swedish Aero Club erected a three-metre-high obelisk as a memorial in the place where she was found dead.